Are You On Track to Hit Your Exit Revenue Goals?
How much should you sell your business for? Financial Advisors often advise you to sell it for X because X is what you’ll need to live the life you’d like in retirement … but they have no idea whether X is realistic or attainable – that’s up to you. And since businesses are bought and sold at a multiple of their revenue (1.2 times, 2.3 times, etc.), when an Advisors says sell for X, what they’re really telling you is the annual revenue you need to hit in your final years of business, right before the sale.
Running “sanity checks” on your exit revenue goals and projections and the marketing programs that are supposed to deliver that revenue will reveal whether you are being too optimistic or pessimistic about the value of your business, and can help you craft a more accurate strategy for achieving your Exit Revenue goal.
Keith Loris, President and CEO of Sales Renewal, discusses how to know if you’re likely to hit your exit revenue numbers and learn how agile, integrated marketing can help, in this informative webinar:
We also created a tool to help guide you through your exit planning process. Use our Exit Planning Analysis guide to keep on track or contact us for exit planning consultations!
The 12 Reasons Owner Transitions Are Not Successful (and What to Do About It)
While building your company is certainly of primary importance to any business owner, properly planning for and executing your exit plan is an often overlooked facet of business ownership that leaves many successful owners in the lurch when it’s time to move on. You’ve worked hard to grow revenue, increase brand awareness, and carve your foothold in the marketplace – don’t let these common setbacks prevent you from achieving the same level of success as you transition forward!
Read the full article at: csq.com
Exit Strategies | Overview of 5 Exit Strategies for Small Business
What exactly IS an exit strategy? Small business owners have their hands full building and maintaining a business, but rarely spend time in advance thinking about how they’ll eventually hand off the company they’ve built. Understanding your options to transition out of the business can help you develop long-term goals and an exit strategy that nets you the largest possible return on your time and financial investment in your business. Check out these five exit strategy types to start thinking ahead!
Read the full article at: www.patriotsoftware.com
Cashing Out: 3 Tips for Valuing and Preparing Your Business for Sale
Sales Renewal has worked with a number of business owners looking to increase revenue in preparation for a sale and our advice is always the same: make sure to plan well in advance. Some of the most common valuation methods for selling your business, such as discounted cash-flow or a multiple of revenue or EBITDA, depend on a track-record of profitability in order to get the best possible price. Whether you’re looking forward to a relaxing retirement or jumping into the next big idea, don’t let your excitement cause you to leave money on the table. The Sales Renewal Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition will help you determine if your current marketing efforts are likely to meet your Exit Revenue Goal.
Miscalculation: The Little Big Horn Of Exit Planning
If you’re like 75% of all business owners, you may have a vague plan to transfer ownership at some point in the future, but feel little urgency to do anything about it now: Business is good, revenue is increasing – what’s the hurry? The author likens this mindset to the false sense of security General Custer felt on that fateful day in 1876! Owners often underestimate what needs to be done in the years leading up to an exit and the author cautions that it’s better to start planning two years too soon, than five minutes too late.
Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from February
We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:
On Product Marketing
Psychological Pricing Is Your Golden Ticket to Selling More – You want to make money. That’s why you run a business. Whether you’re selling a product or a service-you’ll have to put a price on what you’re selling at some point. This article introduces the concept of creating an effective pricing strategy by using psychological pricing tactics. Simply put, it’s a strategic way to price your products or services to influence people when making a buying decision. Continue reading…
On Exit Planning
Are You on Track to Hit Your Exit Revenue Goal? How to know if you’re likely to hit your number and how Agile, Integrated Marketing can help – Most business owners have a sales price in mind when they contemplate selling their business. Because businesses are typically valued at a multiple of revenue (or revenue derivatives such as EBITDA) this sales price is directly dependent on the company’s annual revenue at the time of the exit.
If you are considering selling your business in 2 to 7 years and would like to increase the odds that you will achieve your exit revenue goals, read on to learn how better and more cost-effective marketing will propel you to success. Read the article.
On SEO
Google: SEOs Need 4 Months to a Year for SEO Changes & Ranking Improvement – We’ve said it time and again, but it’s worth repeating. SEO is a long-term strategy. Anyone who promises something different is not the right SEO firm for your business. In fact, in the recently released “How to Hire an SEO” video, Google explicitly mentions how long it takes for a site to see improvements due to SEO changes. Read more and watch the video here.
On PPC Advertising
Google AdWords Benchmarks for YOUR Industry – Whether you’re getting in to PPC advertising for the first time or it’s time for an account review, it can be daunting to know whether or not you’re doing a good job. Sure, we all want to create ads that have highest CTRs and the best conversion rates, but what’s a good metric for one industry isn’t necessarily good for another. So what numbers should you be looking to beat in your industry? This post was updated on 3 Jan 2017 and is chock full of useful online advertising benchmarks:
- Average Click-Through Rate (CTR) by industry
- Average Cost per Click (CPC) by industry
- Average Conversion Rate (CVR) by industry
- Average Cost per Action (CPA) by industry
On Website Security
The Benefits of Installing SSL on Your Website – For several years now Google search results have shown more preference to websites that use HTTPS. (HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to.) While Google claims that this is currently a “mild” ranking signal, there are indications that this is becoming increasingly important. So important that Sales Renewal is in the process of rolling this out to all our clients by purchasing and installing an SSL certificate on their websites and forcing HTTPS. Questions? Please contact us here.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
From exit planning to product marketing, SEO to PPC advertising to website security, here’s a digest of our favorite posts from February.
Are You on Track to Hit Your Exit Revenue Goal?
How to know if you’re likely to hit your number and learn how Agile, Integrated Marketing can help
Most business owners have a sales price in mind when they contemplate selling their business. Because businesses are typically valued at a multiple of revenue (or revenue derivatives such as EBITDA) this sales price is directly dependent on the company’s annual revenue at the time of the exit.
If you are considering selling your business in 2-7 years and would like to increase the odds that you will achieve your exit revenue goals, read on to learn how better and more cost-effective marketing will not only help you hit your exit revenue goal but can also increase your company’s sales price.
Will your current marketing effort deliver the revenue you are counting upon?
The first question to answer is: how much should you spend on marketing your business? There’s no fixed formula, but generally, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, “small businesses with revenues under $5 million should allocate 7 – 8% of their revenues to marketing.” This will need to be adjusted depending on:
- Your current investment in marketing – if you’re underspending, for example, you may need to invest more to catch up;
- Your exit revenue goals – an aggressive goal will most likely require a bigger marketing investment; and
- Your competitive position – how you are positioned compared to your competitors and how competitive your industry is will impact the level of marketing investment you need to make.
To help businesses understand how to make these marketing investment decisions, Sales Renewal has a proprietary process – the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition – that considers:
- Who you market to (B2B vs. B2C)
- What you sell (services vs. products)
- Industry Competitiveness (not competitive to super competitive)
- Firm Competitiveness (weak to strong competitive advantage)
- Top Competitor (much stronger to much weaker)
For example, a business in a highly competitive industry that wants to double its revenue prior to a sale will require a very different marketing investment than one with an average competitive position in typically competitive industry and a modest growth goal.
Marketing Investment Analysis, Exit Planning Edition
The Sales Renewal Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition is composed of 18 high-level questions which typically take 10-15 minutes to answer online. Based on those answers, Sales Renewal will formulate and deliver a set of sales & marketing recommendations specific to your business. Contact us to learn more.
Agile, Integrated Marketing – The Key to Hitting Your Numbers
Sales Renewal has taken two well-known concepts – Agile Development (from the software industry) and Continuous Improvement (from manufacturing) – to develop an approach to marketing that allows small businesses to use their often-limited time and financial resources to maximize their marketing return on investment.
The two key principles of agile, integrated marketing are:
Rapid Iteration – Produce marketing concepts quickly, get them out into the real world and iteratively improve them based upon feedback. A popular agile mechanism is the “sprint” during which the team breaks big, complicated activities into small, bite-sized actions that are quickly implemented and promptly evaluated so that the next set of activities can be prioritized and undertaken.
Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle in Marketing – Agile marketing isn’t just about producing a lot of things quickly. It’s about responding to direct and indirect sources of feedback using rapid iterations to adjust and improve accordingly.
Integrated Marketing Breaks Down Strategic & Tactical Silos
Most marketing problems are multidisciplinary and so require the integration of multiple marketing tactics. For example, getting more leads from your website could be solved by: getting more traffic from SEO or getting more traffic from ads or having a better converting (written, designed) website.
But none of these tactics is right if implemented in a silo. Marketing today is multi-disciplinary, multi-channel and complex, and therefore requires an integrated approach.
The key to making this work? A coordinated, integrated marketing plan.
The Integrated Marketing Plan + Continuous Improvement
The traditional Continuous Improvement cycle is an iterative process that breaks down into four steps: Plan, Do, Check Act. When applied to integrated marketing, it means:
Plan
The first step is to create a coordinated, integrated marketing plan that considers:
- High level, investment view to determine the financial ballpark;
- Assessment of your business goals and strategies; customers; sales, marketing, brand & technology assets and needs;
- Competitive review;
- Specific strategies and tactics; and
- An actionable plan detailing the required expertise, technology, budget and timeframes.
Do
Following your Integrated Marketing Plan, the second step is to put in place the foundational changes (brand, company positioning, etc.); one-time set up and configuration (website, redo social media sites, design direct mail piece, etc.); and on-going marketing (SEO on website, post on social media, mail targeted direct mail, etc.)
Check
Use analytics and benchmarking to measure the effectiveness of your marketing plan to grow your sales & leads. This will two critical questions:
- Where did our visitors and leads come from?
- Which of our activities generated the visit or lead?
These answers will allow you to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not and become more efficient over time.
Act
Integrated marketing is not a “set and forget” process. As you “do” and “check”, you will most likely need to adjust your plan. Acting in sprints allows for fine-tuning without having to recreate your plan.
The Key Benefits of Agile, Integrated Marketing for the Exiting Owner
Implementing an integrated marketing plan allows the exiting owner to increase revenue and decrease the cost per lead and cost per sale in the years before the exit. Using a Continuous Improvement cycle provides marketing metrics that allow you to systematize your marketing processes and workflows to make them repeatable and the Company less dependent on key individuals. Combining these concepts in an agile, integrated marketing program will allow you to make growth and return more predictable, thus reducing the buyer’s risk and resulting in a greater sale price.
This post is a summary of information presented in a recent Sales Renewal webinar, co-sponsored with BTA. Watch the full presentation here:
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Sales Renewal is committed to helping all small businesses grow their sales while sharing the risk and reward. If you’re considering selling your business in 2-7 years, however, our powerful agile, integrated marketing will be particularly attractive as it can help you maximize your sale price. To learn more, please contact us today.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Most business owners have a sales price in mind when they contemplate selling their business. Because businesses are typically valued at a multiple of revenue (or revenue derivatives such as EBITDA) this sales price is directly dependent on the company’s annual revenue at the time of th
e exit.
If you are considering selling your business in 2-7 years and would like to increase the odds that you will achieve your exit revenue goals, read on to learn how better and more cost-effective marketing will not only help you hit your exit revenue goal but can also increase your company’s sales price.
Best of Growth Spurts – Our Favorite Posts from January
We regularly update our Growth Spurts blog with actionable marketing & technology advice, news and information. These articles are often hand-picked to address issues and projects we’re working on with our clients, but they are relevant to most business owners involved with any aspect of marketing their business. Here are our 5 favorite posts this month:
On Content Marketing
10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing – Content marketing – your blog, downloads, white papers – is quite often one of the biggest marketing expenses, and one of the most difficult to measure.
Adwords and email gives the satisfaction of seeing immediate, measurable results. But your investment in “content”? It’s often a big unknown.
The goals in this article help put that investment in context: Invest in content, and you invest in your business. Consider: building trust and rapport with your audience; attracting new prospects; deepening loyalty with existing customers; helping with SEO; and even attracting strategic partners.
And to help you develop your 2017 Content Marketing plan, this article – B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – gathers 25 content marketing stats all in one place … dive in, explore and learn.
On Email Marketing
13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017 – Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage your audience to engage with content and to nurture leads in your database along the buyer’s journey. Understanding the points made in this article will ensure that your email marketing is 2017-ready.
On Exit Planning
First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give? – For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website. Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our alliance partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.
On SEO
8 SEO Trends You Need to Pay Attention to in 2017 – SEO is a constantly changing landscape. This article highlights eight trends to be aware of as we start 2017, including:
- HTTPS is no longer just an option. Security issues aside, Google has confirmed it’s a ranking signal.
- Social media will be an even larger referral traffic goldmine.
- Mobile-first strategies have become a necessity.
- Links will continue to be important, but they should be a by-product of excellent content.
Continue reading for details on these and 4 more SEO trends for 2017.
The Most Effective SEO Tactics – According to recent research from Ascend2, marketers say creating relevant content is the most effective search engine optimization (SEO) tactic. Results also show that it’s the most difficult to execute. Read the article.
On Analytics
How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing – Strategy => Content => Channel. This article reinforces the need for all marketers to understand the difference between a marketing strategy (what message are you trying to convey) and a marketing channel (what’s the best method for conveying that message).
It also reinforces one of Sales Renewal’s key beliefs that “there is no ‘digital marketing’ and ‘traditional marketing.'” Sure, there are digital channels and traditional channels, but they all should be used to support the marketing strategy. Read the article.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Learn 13 Things to Start, Stop & Keep Doing With Your Email Marketing in 2017, 8 SEO Trends to Pay Attention to in 2017, How Google Analytics Ruined Marketing, and More.
First Impressions are Critical in the Sale of a Business. What Impression Does Your Website Give?
It’s often been said that perception is reality. This is especially true when you’re selling a business – first impressions really matter. And these days, most impressions of a business start with your website.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
For business owners contemplating selling their business, one of the many factors that can help them achieve their exit revenue goals is better and more cost-effective marketing. This includes their online presence, which starts with the company website.
Not sure if your website will help or hurt your ability to sell your business? Our partner at Business Transition Academy outlines five factors to take into account.
Read Original Article
Sales Renewal’s Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition Is In Beta
Sales Renewal is beta testing a new tool – the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition – that business owners who are considering selling their business can use to assess how much to invest in marketing to meet their revenue goals at the time of sale. We’d love feedback on the tool and the resulting report.
Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition
As with the original Marketing Investment Analysis (see below), the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition asks you to answer a series of high-level questions (24 in all) and typically takes 15-20 minutes to complete online. Sales Renewal will then review your answers and, within 3 business days, deliver a custom-to-your-business report with insights into how confident you can be that your projected marketing budget can deliver your projected annual revenue at the time of sale.
Once officially launched on October 15, the Marketing Investment Analysis: Exit Planning Edition will be available for $250, but during this beta period, the tool is available for free. If you’re considering selling your business and are interested in testing it, please provide your email below and you’ll be taken to the survey automatically.
Building on the Marketing Investment Analysis
In 2013, Sales Renewal launched the original Marketing Investment Analysis, which is designed for businesses in any stage of development. This affordable questionnaire and resulting 4-page, custom-to-your-business report provides specific programmatic and budgetary recommendations for marketing your business and will help you answer the three most common questions asked by business owners:
- Am I investing the right amount in sales & marketing?
- Which marketing programs or tactics will be the most effective for me?
- How much should I invest in each?
The Marketing Investment Analysis costs $250 and is available here.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Sales Renewal has just launched a new tool – the Marketing Investment Analysis, Exit Planning Edition – that business owners who are considering selling their business can use to assess how much to invest in marketing to meet their revenue goals at the time of sale. We’d love feedback on the tool and the resulting report. Learn how you can be a beta tester here…